The Walking Dead: "When the Dead Come Knocking"Review

Let me get my big complaint about “When the Dead Come Knocking” out of the way, which is simply… What the hell, Michonne? Her behavior when first brought into the prison was just ridiculous. Enough with the glowering. Enough with the silence. This was not the time. I get that she’s a very guarded character, but this was just exasperating to watch, and Rick calling her out on it (“You came here for a reason!”) didn’t make it better when she initially wouldn’t even say her name. The Walking Dead has not been great with the portrayal of many of the female characters and Michonne is a character I desperately want to like – and really do in the comics. So I hope they can figure her out soon. Attitude is fine, but it has to be balanced better than this. Also, it was a bit convenient how she never mentioned that a guy named Merle, or hell, a one-armed redneck, was the one who snatched Maggie and Glenn, so as not to have Daryl (or Rick) realize who it is yet.

Overall though, this was a highly effective episode that put a couple of lovable characters through hell. With last season’s silly “Loving you almost got people killed” drama behind them, Glenn and Maggie are back to being a very likable pair and seeing them hurt -- emotionally and physically -- like this was not fun, yet incredibly intense and gripping. On the heels of his beat down from Merle, seeing Glenn trapped in a room, tied to a chair with a zombie let loose, was suitably freaky and it was very gratifying to see him fight back and manage to survive.

As for Maggie, in the comics, The Governor’s treatment of a female prisoner is one of the more reprehensible things we see in the entire series. And yes, it doesn’t go as far here, which some might say is “chickening out.” But look, I don’t want to see horrible things happen to Maggie. More importantly, what he did do to her was terrible as it was, as he forced her to strip, slammed her down on a table and basically did all he could to try and mentally break her. Her telling him, in the face of all this, “Do whatever you’re gonna do. Go to hell” was a powerful moment for Maggie. Lauren Cohan did terrific work here, showing someone simultaneously terrified and defiant in the face of a hellish scenario. The Governor bringing her, still half-naked, to Glenn was also a nasty bit of psychological torture for both of them and by the time The Governor had a gun to Glenn and Maggie blurted out that they were at a prison to save his life, it was very understandable why she would give up that information.

All of which to say is, if you didn’t hate The Governor before, this episode should have you wanting very bad things to happen to him. Oh, and we also saw the return of Merle’s racism, as he offensively cackled about T-Dog – in a season that has slowly added back the elements that made Merle so Merle when we met him. It was also a well done “Oh s***” moment when Glenn mentioned Andrea among those he was traveling with (including other people he knew to be dead), unknowingly letting Merle know he was lying.

After some early “Andrea wants more Governor sex” antics, this was a much better episode for her than last week. Honestly, I’ve come to expect her to be so malleable, I was concerned she would buy into Milton’s talk about the zombies retaining core elements of themselves and contribute to doing something stupid with poor, old man Coleman, that would put them in danger. But no, she kept her wits about her, remembered how it was with Amy and, in a very cool moment, was ready when needed to stab Zombie Coleman in the head when Milton dared to unstrap him. It was also interesting to see Milton’s whole ritual with Coleman, which seemed utterly bizarre when introduced, but then made sense when we realized what his experiment was.

After his last two episodes of insanity, a calmer Rick had a couple of nice, quiet moments with both Carl and Daryl this week, where he got to acknowledge what they’ve done in the wake of this recent tragedy – whether it was to be so helpful in Daryl’s case, or to do something unbelievably traumatic, in Carl’s case. The fact that Rick’s talk with Carl about what he had to do was so brief felt appropriate – how do you even begin to approach such a thing with your son? Hopefully though, this is not the last time it’ll be touched upon.

That whole sequence with the cabin in the woods Rick’s group come across was a bit bizarre, simply because what was the deal with Hobo Fred (my own name for the gentleman), who was living there? I mean, clearly this guy was crazy and out of it – the dead dog, “I’m calling the cops!” and what not. But he also had been able to survive this entire time out on his own for a long time, so meeting him raised a few question we’ll never get answers to…

That being said, how they dealt with him was certainly notable and very much keeping with the dark theme of doing what you have to in order to survive. Michonne stabbing him to stop him from bringing the zombies to them, followed by Rick and Daryl actually throwing him out to the zombies as a distraction? Yeesh, very brutal, but also pretty compelling in the way it’s showing just how insane this world has gotten. Though, ultimately, you gotta feel bad for that guy… just napping in the middle of the day when a bunch of people ran into his home, stabbed him and threw him to zombies. If only a cop had been there to help!

While I began this review complaining about Michonne, her very first moments, fighting those zombies outside the prison, were really cool. The long shots of her with that sword and the decision to not use any music really helped give a realistic, you-are-there vibe to this absolutely crazy "Woman with sword fights zombies" scenario. And Carl coming to her rescue was another great moment for that kid this season.

As we got into the midseason finale next week, things are suitably intense – The Governor knows about the prison and is formulating his own plans for it, while Rick’s group is sneaking into Woodbury simultaneously. I’m excited to see how this very macabre version of a potential house swap works out…